. . . But the greatest killings occurred after the birds had crossed the Gulf of Mexico in spring and the great flocks moved northward up the North American plains.
These flocks reminded prairie settlers of the flights of passenger pigeons and the curlews were given the name of prairie pigeons. They contained thousands of individuals and would often form dense masses of birds extending half a mile in length and a hundred yards or more in width. When the flock would alight the birds would cover 40 or 50 acres of ground. During such flights the slaughter was almost unbelievable. Hunters would drive out from Omaha and shoot the birds without mercy until they had literally slaughtered a wagon load of them, the wagons being actually filled, and often with the sideboards on at that. Sometimes when the flight was unusually heavy and the hunters were well supplied with ammunition their wagons were too quickly and easily filled, so whole loads of the birds would be dumped on the prairie, their bodies forming piles as large as a couple of tons of coal, where they would be allowed to rot while the hunters proceeded to refill their wagons with fresh victims.
The compact flocks and tameness of the birds made this slaughter possible, and at each shot usually dozens of the birds would fall. In one specific instance a single shot from an old muzzle-loading shotgun into a flock of these curlews, as they veered by the hunter, brought down 28 birds at once, while for the next half mile every now and then a fatally wounded bird would drop to the ground dead. So dense were the flocks when the birds were turning in their flight that one could scarcely throw a missile into it without striking a bird. . . .
In addition to the numerous gunners who shot these birds for local consumption or simply for the love of killing, there developed a class of professional market hunters, who made it a business to follow the flights. . . .
The field glass was used by the hunters to follow their flights. . . . There was no difficulty in getting quite close to the sitting birds, perhaps within 25 or 35 yards, and when at about this distance the hunters would wait for them to arise on their feet, which was the signal for the first volley of shots. The startled birds would rise and circle about the field a few times, affording ample opportunity for further discharge of the guns, and sometimes would re-alight on the same field, when the attach would be repeated. Mr. Wheeler has killed as many as 37 birds with a pump gun at one rise. Sometimes the bunch would be seen with the glass alighting in a field two or three miles away, when the hunters would at once drive to that field with horse and buggy as rapidly as they could, relocate the birds, get out, and resume the fusillade and slaughter. . . .
In the eighties the Eskimo curlew began decreasing rapidly. . . .